Might be able to come to this after all, my sister's had to delay her trip for a couple of days because she's suffering from severe migraines at the moment - which hopefully should have cleared up by the weekend because I, for one, wouldn't fancy going to a Rammstein gig with a migraine.

perhaps for somewhat perverse reasons, i quite enjoyed the lillian ross piece -- it's sent me back to brendan gill's "here at the new yorker". i will write reasons and perversity and gill and maybe ohagan up on the LRB thread when i am no longer ill, also ditto wordsworth's fun

(i am no longer ill today in the sense of being i think virus-free at last but i am still very tired and last night was the first thing close to a normal night's sleep since tuesday)

(i ahev not read the poems and think it quite unlikely i ever will, i feel bad about this habit but it is now decades embedded and i'm guessing unshakeable)

Mark yes it is fair to say that though O'Hagan is bad, the review is not unreadable and has a kind of fun element.

I suppose part of the irritation though is the patent obviousness with which O'H attached himself to a certain world that he admired, and then the way that he (often) writes about it - a kind of (non-comic) pastiche of the original; trying to be Didion, or whoever.

If you think of say a Paul Morley encountering a scene, he wouldn't write in a lame pastiche of its manner but would encounter it with his own style.

Unless it was for a book on rock press history in which case he wouldn't write it?

yes i don't disagree with that -- abt the attachment i mean. i haven't written this up yet bcz i've been apply for a job by telling the publication start-up i'm applying to that their underlying philosophy is probably bad (i have no idea what it is) and so they should feel bad

semi-unrelatedly i just sent the LRB a snarky email re LR and AO'H pointing out that what in fact transformed the unpleasant qualities he admires in her into tremendous journalism was the involvement in her work (or threat of involvement hovering behind it) of the new yorker's fact-checking department, at-that-time world-leading